Love Games Trilogy

By J.F. Lowe

This hot, steamy and oh so kinky marriage just got derailed by an ex looking for revenge. But how far will they go to get them back. Murder? Come check it out!<

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.F. Lowe
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648753742

J.F. Lowe

USA Today bestselling author, J.F. Lowe is renowned for writing spine-tingling thrillers, heart-Wickedly Innocent military romances with laugh-out-loud dialogue, alpha males, and absolutely sizzling sex scenes.

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Love Games Trilogy

J.F. Lowe

Published by J.F. Lowe

Copyright © 2020 J.F. Lowe

Edited by Kallee Wright

EBook ISBN: 978-0648737-4-2

Cover images: Canva

Cover created by J.F. Lowe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

Warning: The contents of this book for a mature audience

Dedication

To the staff Gladesville Bayview Hotel, your staff made me feel like part of the family. Lots of beers, many laughs and my home away from home when writing. I will miss you all.

To the women that inspired me to keep writing even when it seemed impossible. Shayla, Audrey, Meredith and Leslie you are absolutely amazing.

Last but not least to my to my wonderful husband Robbie, who reminded me that we all have fears and pasts but that is exactly what it is, the past. The past can only hurt you if you let yourself relive it. You taught me to live for now. I love you xo

Married Games

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Prologue

As the prisms of light filter through our bedroom door, the sound of my husband's light snore beside me bears no comfort. I’m exhausted, but I don't want to close my eyes. It’s not that I am afraid. Or maybe I am. But not of my husband, god no. He is the most loving, supportive and caring man I have ever met. I know he loves me and I am completely and utterly head over heels in love with Matthew. He is the kind of man that I always wished I could have my happily ever after with.

So what had happened. Why I am I laying here wondering what had put me in the hospital? Why had four Victorian Police officers come and searched my house and threatened to take my husband away. Why did I feel like something seriously wrong had occurred. I just don’t know. I know that the exhaustion is playing its part.

I watch the rise and fall of my husband's chest; maybe if I concentrate on that, I will fall into a lull and drift off to sleep. But after another hour somehow it's not as comforting as it once was. Instead, my chest feels tight, and my heart continues to race. I force myself to take a deep breath, but the anxiety rises once again. I know something is wrong. Is it me? Did I do something? Did I take something? The emergency doctor had told me my blood alcohol was 0.02 which to me was no that high. With that amount of alcohol in my system, I could still have legally driven a motor vehicle.

We had two bottles of wine between the two of us. A bottle of crisp white Sauvignon Blanc and I had barely finished my first glass of Shiraz. It had been a typical Saturday night. In fact, it was the first Saturday night in months that we had decided to stay in, have a few wines and a nice cheese platter. Cheese and wine had always been our thing. The cheese platter had had all of his favourites, a beautiful Tasmanian blue, a creamy triple Brie and apricot and almond cheese, topped off with my favourite Danish salami and line of plain and peppered crackers on each side of the board. We even had our favourite YouTube playlist running on the television in the lounge room as background noise.

So, why did I end up in hospital? Why did the police come? And why did I feel like our lives have just been turned upside down. I lay watching my husband, no it definitely isn't fear of my husband keeping me awake but maybe more fear of myself. A sinking feeling that I may have just ruined my marriage, my life and hurt the only man I have ever truly loved.

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Chapter 1

Sarah

Three Months Earlier…

The keys turn in the front door. He’s home, my love is home. It's only been eight hours since I last saw him but each day seems to feel longer. I sit waiting to greet him as he enters our inner city five bedroom penthouse apartment. As the jingle of the keys to play, nothing sounded better than to know he was home. I was not alone anymore. Except for Baxter that is. Baxter our little fur baby, a little seven-month-old Jack Russel that from the moment we went to the breeders home he came right out and licked my foot as if a sign to say, your my human.

I am his human alright, he absolutely ignores all others when it comes to taking orders. He is a people dog but I am the only he will listen to when I tell him to sit or no or basically any other command. Then again, am the only one that he spends all his days with, as he sits by my feet while I either write or read. That where life has come to in my thirty-six year long life. I turned into everything I never thought I would be.

Gone were the days where I was a CEO of a multi-million dollar company living the high life on cruise ships travelling the world and earning a good salary as I went. My life was now isolation, novel characters and wine.

My husband finally enters our apartment,you would never think that he is a construction mogul with the way he places his filthy construction lunch box on the kitchen table. Then again, Matthew is always the hands-on kind of guy. He knows every part of his business inside and out. He still gets on the tools most days, changing out of his suit and into his high vis gear before helping out on site when needed.

Mr reliable is what I called him when we first met. Just like his routine every day when he gets home from work. He kisses me hello before heading to the veranda and disposing of this finished lemonade bottle in the bottle recycling bin. It is the same for his lunch and pretty much everything about my husband. His alarm goes off at five thirty, we both get up. He opens the wardrobe and dresses in his suit for work and I head off to make his lunch. It’s the say every week, day. Two ham and cheese wraps with three snack size chocolates and a 1.25 litre bottle of sugar-free lemonade. I use to think that anybody that ate the same thing each day must be a bit strange because have the same monotonous thing would be like eating cardboard.

That was the thing though, ever since meeting my husband two years prior it was always the same. Every day during the week was the same and when he returned home at night it was more of the same. After he returns from the veranda, he kisses me lightly again before retreating to the shower. I had the same routine too. While he showered I would get up and grab a glass of wine and sit on the couch until he six o’clock when the news starts. I would rise from the couch and begin making dinner.

Day after day during the week, nothing changes and then the weekend is always just as predictable. Saturday morning breakfast out at our local cafe, caramel latte and smashed avocado on toast for me and either pancakes or corn fritters if he was feeling adventurous. After we would go and see an elderly neighbour as she had been placed in a nursing home by her children and then we would either go the local bar or head to a restaurant before heading to the bar later in the evening.

Our lives the same story week after week, like a the same song on repeat. The only change we had in our lives was a recent diagnosis of cancer for me. A lump that had appeared in my mouth a month prior to our wedding had grown and now was creating issues with my speech and not to mention ridiculously annoying as it rubs against my teeth. I had thought it was a simple mouth ulcer.

Something that would disappear after the stress of the wedding had died down. But it hadn’t and eventually it got sick of it and gone to my local doctor. It took her less than five minutes before referring me off to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist on a priority list and less than ten days before I was surgery removing the cancers.

It was another blow to my health something that I had to fight with since the early months of my life. Another cancer. Another surgery and another time in my life where the worry of making it to my next birthday begins. It was something I thought about regularly. It feels like I'm a living and breathing medical book. I had already learnt how to cope with the diagnosis after my second cancer diagnosis six years prior but this time had my husband by my side at every step. That was something I was not use to. I was used to being alone throughout the process.

The doctors, the chemotherapy, radiation and what seemed like never-ending moments of being a pin cushion. Throughout my first two cancers my former husband was never there, no family and no friends. I had been sent to the hospital seven hours away in the capital city and my former sister-in-law sat in the waiting area on the ground floor each and every time I went. But that was always the case.

I became chatty with the medical professions along the way just to keep myself from crying for each procedure. I had developed such a habit that I was on a first name basis with my local phlebotomists at the pathology lab. We made light of the fact that I was there on either a weekly or daily basis depending on the circumstances. I called her my very own vampire. She laughed everything when I said she was more real than Edward from the Twilight Saga. Then again maybe she didn’t realise that at the time I just wanted to be immortal or at least be alive long enough to watch my three children grow up, get married and maybe one day make me a grandmother but I never told her that.

This time though I wasn’t alone. Matthew sat beside me, holding my hand and gently rubbing my back as we waited in the admission section of the hospital. I’m not sure who was more scared and whether he was holding my hand to console me or if it made him feel better as he didn’t speak. I'm not sure quite sure that he could. He had become more animated from the moment I told him that I had cancer. That day played through my head.

I sat patiently in the specialist office and told myself that I might walk away with a few stitches today as surely he would just lance what I thought was a cyst and after the stitches dissolve and I would be back to normal.

That wasn't the case, after a careful examination and nasal camera inserted the specialist who had been all smiles at the beginning of the appointment had become sullen. He was extremely polite but I could tell that he was trying to find the words to tell me it wasn’t as simple as I thought. Letting out a deep breath I'm sure he had been holding.

Sarah, we need to take this out and immediately. He said flipping through his leather bound desk diary.

I am going to move some things around but I will book the surgery for the morning of the eighteenth. There is no waiting for this and to be honest the severity of it won’t be completely clear until I open it up and can do further exploration under general anaesthetic. He finally said as raised his head to finally look at my face.

Umm, what am I missing here. I thought this was just an ulcer or a cyst that would be over an done with today.

Sarah, I believe what you have is a mucoepidermoid carcinoma. Which is a form of cancer that affects the salivary glands. We need to do surgery and straight away.

Bile rose in my throat, cancer. No. Not again. I had already beaten cancer twice first Ewing's sarcoma in my right humerous in 2009 and then medullary carcinoma in my right breast in 2013. It can’t be cancer, I can not go through that again. The doctor’s voice drowned out by the sound of my heart pounding through my head.

My heart raced and my stomach continued to churn while the rest of my body seemed to be on autopilot. It must have been because I managed to leave the ear, nose and throat specialist and the 35 minutes drive through the city home before the tears finally began to fall.

Sarah. Sarah. A shaking on my thigh brought me back to the present.

Sarah, the nurse is here to take you up to pre-op my husband offered his hand to help me from my seat.

Oh, I'm sorry. I stood collecting my bag. I turned and gave my husband a kiss before following the nurse through the restricted access area.

Chapter 2

Matthew

I had known that I was all wrong for her, that I never should have touched her, but I’d been so drawn to her sweet innocence, her genuine smiles, her interest in me as a person, that I'd been unable to resist her.

She made me laugh when he’d forgotten how. She made me want to be more when I’d stopped believing in anything good. She’d pulled me out of a grim existence and had given me something to hope for. She’d made me feel when I thought my father’s physical and verbal abuse had stripped me of the ability to care for anyone or anything.

She was my salvation, my reason for turning my life around when I had been so close to not giving a shit about anything and probably would have turned out just like my old man if it hadn’t been for her giving me something to truly live for.

I had been stuck in a rut of work, sex and booze. My longtime friend Eden had been the only constant in my life but even then our relationship was toxic. We had met at a BDSM club in Melbourne’s outer suburbs after I’d received an invitation from a childhood buddy that had gone into the Navy. He and his mates owned the club and offered me a place to relax and learn the lifestyle.

The moment I had met Eden I knew he was trouble but I couldn’t help but look at him with a sense off awe. The way that women seem to flock to him. He was charismatic and from what I had learnt, a good dominant. It was only when I walked past one of the view rooms one evening that I found out he was a man that also liked to share women. I stopped by the window watching him as he in unison with another man fucked the woman fifty shades of Sunday. It was one of the most erotic things I had ever seen. It was at that moment Eden’s eyes locked with mine and his silent nod became the start of a long friendship.

We shared many women of the next five years, some as one night stands and others became more long term. None of them stayed though. They always ended up telling me that they only really wanted Eden. So I was back to being alone. That was until the day I met Sarah.

She had sent through a